Now the Welsh-raised, Indonesia-based director has set his sights on the gangster flick with The Raid 2.

Just hours after Rama (Iko Uwais) has escaped the first film’s gang-infested tower block, the rookie cop agrees to go undercover in a Jakarta crime organisation led by steely Japanese godfather Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo).

It’s quite a mission. First off he has to get himself thrown into prison so he can cosy up to Bangun’s psycho son Uco (Arifin Putra). Then after his release he has to join the crime family moments before a brutal turf war kicks off.

If you’ve seen Infernal Affairs or The Departed (Martin Scorsese’s remake) this may sound very familiar. And Evans’ hackneyed story, his deliberate use of gangster clichés and his two-dimensional characters mean this is never going to reinvent the gangster film.

But the action really is something else. Somehow Evans keeps upping the stakes over an eye-popping and surprisingly zippy two-and-a-half hours. The first scrap begins in a prison toilet block with Rama using a single cubicle to funnel a mob of about 50 inmates into his exploding fists.

Then there’s a mass brawl in a muddy prison exercise yard (think Glastonbury on steroids), a breathless car chase through the streets of Jakarta and a balletic fight in a cheesy nightclub.

Whenever the plot gets a bit confusing, Evans cleverly distracts with a string of side characters. Yayan Ruhian (the grandmaster of Indonesian martial art pencak silat who choreographed the fights with Uwais) returns as a hitman tramp and Evans pays homage to Quentin Tarantino with two assassins called Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man.

But Evans still has something quite special in his locker for the big showdown. In what feels like a tribute to Bruce Lee’s unfinished masterpiece Game of Death, Rama must battle a series of villains inside a gangster’s lair.

The centrepiece is a real kitchen nightmare where Rama tangles with a knife-wielding chef. The violence is brutal, brilliantly choreographed and at times disgracefully funny. It won’t be for everyone – but action-movie fans will be scraping their jaws off the floor.